You Play The Hand You're Dealt

This comment, from a venture capitalist, is pretty typical following... well, pretty much any election:

I think Obama has the election pretty wrapped up absent a major external event. I think my parents might vote for him. They are army people, lifelong republicans, who are in their late 70s/early 80s. But if they vote for Obama, they are not really voting for him, they are voting against the GOP and what is has become and what it has done to this country. Obama's mandate, if he wins, will be thin and he should not overplay it. He must win these skeptics who held their nose and voted for him if he wants to govern with a real mandate. And that won't be easy and he must govern from the far center which is where our country really is right now. And I think he can and will do that.

If you recall how G.W. overplayed his hand following the 2004 election ("I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.") this might appear to be common sense. G.W. was narrowly elected, didn't have great public support for the changes he wished to press, and his initiatives failed. Something similar might be said about Bill Clinton's first couple of years, where he was stymied by his own party.

But in both cases, was the problem that they didn't have a strong enough mandate? Or that they overplayed their hands? Bill Clinton probably anticipated greater support from his own party - in retrospect he should have worked to build that consensus, or in its absence to at least build a popular consensus for his initiatives, before he tried to push them through. G.W. wanted to reinvent Social Security, proposing "reforms" that were supported more in theory than in practice within his party and which were viewed skeptically by the public. Like Clinton, and in contrast to the party unity of his first four years in office, he suffered a breakdown in party discipline that made it impossible for him to advance his proposals. After that, his continuing efforts to advance his "reform" agenda eroded his public support.

Don't underestimate G.W.'s tactics merely because they failed. He managed to cram through a great many controversial initiatives during his first two years in office, most of which were treated as minor issues or non-issues by the time the 2004 election rolled around. Saving "Social Security reform" for his second term reflects the greater political risk involved. But the Republicans had the sense to know that initiatives that pass more than two years before an election generally won't be big issues when the election finally comes. News coverage will dwindle, pundits will move on to other issues, voter anger will subside, and in all likelihood the election will turn on other issues.

To advance his agenda, the new President, Obama or McCain, should evaluate his position: What initiatives are likely to be well-received in Congress, by the public, or both? What important initiatives might pass with some finessing of Congress, the public, or both? What initiatives are likely to fail? He can build a first term agenda based upon that analysis.

But what he shouldn't do is worry about whether three or four years later a particular set of swing voters will be offended that he carried out his promises, when they had secretly hoped he would not. Really, what's the advice here? "Wait four years to see if you get a bigger mandate"? Absent catastrophe a President probably has only one chance to be transformative - and that chance most likely comes (and goes) in the first half of the first term. No, certainly, the newly elected President won't want to overplay his hand - but if he wants to change the country in any meaningful way he needs to play his hand for all it's worth.

The Clintons' Bad Gamble?

It has seemed like even after he won the nomination the Clintons, and perhaps especially Bill Clinton, wanted Obama to come with hat in hand and say, "I just can't win this without you." More cynical people (and yes, there are some more cynical than I) have suggested that the Clintons secretly hoped Obama would lose so that Hillary Clinton could run again in 2012.

But if things keep going the way they're going, the Clinton's 1992 observation that it's "the economy, stupid" is going to prove itself correct, and Obama will "do it without them." In which case it not only would have been better for the party, but better for the Clintons, had they immediately and unreservedly gotten on board with Obama from the moment he became the inevitable nominee.

Note, I'm not suggesting that Hillary Clinton should have stopped campaigning one moment sooner than that. Note also, as I have previously suggested, I'm of the opinion that Obama could and should have done more to mend fences with the Clintons after the primary campaign ended.

I Am Not Impressed....

With Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times. Regarding Bill Clinton's statement, "I am not a racist," Malcolm says,

Former presidents get a whole lot of leeway in what they say in public. But former President Bill Clinton just violated one of the prime rules of political communications: Never say what you are not.

"I am not a crook," said Richard Nixon, which, of course, raised or confirmed the issue in the minds of millions during the long-running Watergate scandal that forced him from office. And provided a historic sound bite.

Uh oh... I said what I'm not. Does Malcolm think that means that I am, in fact, impressed?

Don't count on it.

Let's apply Malcolm-think to some of McCain's statements:

• McCain's an economist!

• McCain has guaranteed the success of 'the surge'!

• McCain's in the habit of making promises to his country that he does not intend to keep!

• McCain is unappreciative of blogs! (Okay, that may in fact be his actual thought.)

A similar list could be compiled of Obama's "I am nots" - some keep trying with this one - but I picked McCain out of the apparent partisan nature of Malcolm's potshot.

A Nasty Two-Way Street

One thing that continues to hurt the Democratic party, and results in an absurd number of self-described Democrats to say they're "undecided" or inclined to vote for McCain,¹ is the party's tendency to devour itself. You saw the same thing going on during the Republican primaries but, now that they have their candidate, for the most part they're pulling themselves together and presenting a unified front. The Dems have never been that disciplined.

Making it worse, of course, is the continued tension between the Clintons and their supporters and the Obama team. You'll still find Clinton dead-ender sites saying it's Obama's fault that race is presently an issue in the campaign, or that picking Hillary Clinton as a Vice Presidential candidate would be a magic cure-all for Obama's campaign, but portending disaster if he picks somebody else. Meanwhile, this type of conduct is also blamed on Obama:

Snow asked Clinton, "Do you personally have any regrets about what you did campaigning for your wife?"

With his arms folded and looking a bit tense, Clinton replied, "Yes, but not the ones you think. And it would be counterproductive for me to talk about it."

Barely pausing for a breath, he added, "There are things I wish I'd urged her to do, things I wish I had said, things I wish I hadn't said. But I am not a racist, I never made a racist comment, and I didn't attack him personally," a clear allusion to Sen. Barack Obama.

So he won't go into the mistakes that he regrets, but he'll stick in something he wasn't asked about - something that as being "counterproductive" goes can only help McCain - the implication that Obama or Obama's supporters wrongly branded him as a racist.

Seriously, folks, other than some poor choices of words that one would not expect from a politician of Clinton's skill, has anybody said, "Bill Clinton's a racist"? Does anybody believe that Bill Clinton's a racist? If so, I'd like to meet this person. There is a population that views some of the Clinton team's comments as having been intended to draw attention to Obama's race, and imply the rhetorical question, "Can a black candidate win the election", but there's a world of difference between believing the Clintons engaged in some low road politics and believing that they're racist. (And no, I don't care if their perception is entirely fair, entirely unfair, or somewhere in between - it exists, and thus it's something that must be dealt with.)

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman asks why the Obama camp isn't engaged in rapprochement. And he raises a valid point. Obama is too slow to credit Clinton, either individually or as a Democratic President, when contrasting the 90's to the Bush II years. And perhaps as the nominee, Obama should take the initiative.

But at the same time, unless they've been secretly told with 100% certainty that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, I think it would do wonders if the Clinton camp would stop playing up Hillary Clinton as the best, perhaps only, V.P. choice, and start campaigning unreservedly for Obama. And if they have been told that Hillary Clinton will be the V.P. choice, they should already be doing just that.

As it stands, there's something to the Hillary Clinton dead-enders' claim - which to me comes across as a gloat - that Obama will be harmed by any choice of V.P. other than Clinton. If he picks a woman, "Why is she more qualified than Clinton?" If he picks a man, "Why not a woman?" But you know what? If the "white voter" concerns Hillary Clinton raised are as pressing as she suggested at the time - and pretty much everybody concedes that there is a block of voters that is unlikely or unwilling to vote for a black man - I don't think that his picking her will help him with that block. I'm not sure that any pick will, but unfortunately I suspect that the type of voter at issue would be most influenced by the presence of a white man on the ticket.

Meanwhile, something brooding , negative comments don't help overcome are the Clinton's negatives with large numbers of voters. Sure, they're mostly Republicans, but some are independents or "swing" voters. Clinton's negatives raise valid concerns for the Obama team that adding her to the ticket could hurt him in the polls. A cheery, enthusiastic Clinton team pressing right now for Obama's victory (whatever their personal feelings may be) could help demonstrate both that the Clintons can help Obama win and that concerns about Hillary Clinton's negatives are overblown. A sulking, half-hearted "he's the candidate"-type endorsement, accompanied by the reciprocal nursing of grudges over a hard-fought primary? The Clintons are more than smart enough to know where that leads. Here's an idea: no more of the childish refusal to endorse Obama as qualified to be President.

I guess this goes out to Obama and both Clintons: You need to be in this to win, and to the extent that it means you have to "get over yourselves", do it.
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1. I think there's an inherent absurdity for any person, after proclaiming ideological alignment with one political party, to then say, "But I'm going to vote for the other party's presidential candidate." If your party affiliation is that tenuous, why claim it in the first place?